Don't Eat With Your Mouth Full

Where can we live but days?

Did I say it would be a while before I had to perform again in front of the public? I lied - or rather, I forgot that I'd agreed to give a reading at the Royal Western Academy next Saturday. Their current expedition is on "The Power of the Sea", and I'm going to be reading an extract from my grandfather's account of being shipwrecked in 1908. I've yet to do the extracting, but by way of preparation I visited after lunch and found a suitably stormy picture to stand in front of. While I was there, I stepped onto the balcony and took a picture of the Victoria Rooms, aka Bristol University Music Department, aka the courthouse in a recent Sherlock. Excuse my pasty companion, who is obscuring a fine statue of Edward VII:

Then a short walk to visit Jeremy Deller's "English Magic" exhibition at the City Museum. This was a bit of a curate's egg, though I enjoyed the series of black-and-white photographs from 1973 based around Bowie's Ziggy Stardust tour of that year. The video of people jumping about a Stonehenge bouncy castle to the sound of a steel band, on the other hand, was a tad too "Olympic Opening Ceremony" for my taste. This exhibition was apparently commissioned as the British contribution to the Venice Biennale - which begs the question of what happened to Wales and Scotland, or indeed (since by "British" we presumably actually mean UK) Northern Ireland. Perhaps it was thought that Celtic magic could be taken for granted.

Finally, to the Yume Cultural Club, where this month we were being inducted into the gentle art of making sushi. Having tried and failed spectacularly at this at home once I was a bit nervous, but the results were passable, if a little out of focus:

After all that I felt quite cultured out, and came home to rewatch the tragedy of Miki Sayaka (whose unexpected Faustian trajectory in Madoka Magica is still my favourite thing in that awesome show) and mark a few essays. In all, not a bad day - even if it started with having to put my daughter on a train to Brighton. Having her around is always the coolest.